Art has been part of mankind for thousands of years. Scholars have come up with different theories of art; one among them is the expression theory. The theory was developed during the Romantic Movement, which reacted against C18th classicism and placing the artist at the focal point of his or her work. Accordingly, art work is believed to portray the exceptional, individual stance and sentiments of the artist; consequently for art to be considered good, it must clearly show the sentiments and feelings the individual intends to express (Freeland, 2001). However, Freeland openly disagrees with this theory of art, but favors a cognitive theory. Since the writer holds the expression theory of art, the paper will respond to Freeland’s criticism.
It is important to mention that Freeland was in favor of cognitive theory which holds that art is closely related to language since it is an avenue through which artists try to air or share complex ideas and thoughts. According to the scholar, adopting the expression theory is not adequate in explaining art work. Freeland, (2001) asserts that the theory is thus limiting since it only allows artists to express their feelings and emotions.
Although she is right that art work does not only express feelings and emotions but also ideas, I tend to strongly believe that the concept of the ideas to be presented is a by-product of the artists’ emotions or feeling, for instance, paintings from Mali showing people under a pool of blood. It is my view that the work was done by the artist to express his feelings and emotions based on the killings in the country hence presenting the idea that war is actually a bad thing.
There are also, some instances where art work does not necessarily express ideas. For instance, music has been found not to express ideas but feelings and emotions of the artist (Freeland, 2001). Additionally borrowing from the suggestions of Ayn Rand, it is worth noting that the primary objective of art work is not to communicate but to objectify certain values such as culture among others.
Ideally, the importance of art work can only be measured by the impact it has to the society. This is a view that is also held by Freeland. According to the expression theory of art, the best way to impact on a given population or group of people is by capturing their attention. There is no better way in my opinion other than using the emotions and feelings of the artists. When artists creatively express their feelings and emotions, the audiences are likely to be affected or impacted by the same sentiments (Freeland, 2001).
It also seems that cognitive theory of art fronted by Freeland tends to present artists and their work as two distinct entities where the artists’ characteristics, experiences as well as emotions do not have a direct impact on their work. This is not right in my opinion since; the products of art are largely influenced by the past and present experiences of the artists. It is through such experiences that ideas are presented through art work (Freeland, 2001). Last but not least, the theory is indeed suitable in interpreting art since it is in correspondence to intuition of different contemporary artists. For instance the terrible passion of humanity has been expressed clearly by red and green.
From the review of the expression theory of art work, it is evident that despite the fact that it has been criticized by scholars such as Freeland, it still has a number of strength making it a suitable approach to defining and interpreting art work.
Reference
Freeland, C. (2001). But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory. Oxford University: Oxford University Press.